All 21 people who died in the bus crash in Mestre, near Venice, northern Italy, have been identified. Nine Ukrainians, four Romanians and three Germans were killed, as was the Italian bus driver, a spokesman for Venice Mayor Luigi Brugnaro announced late on Wednesday. Other deaths came from Portugal, South Africa and Croatia. They also included a small child. The body of the Italian bus driver was autopsied on Thursday.
The autopsy aims to clarify whether the bus accident was caused by the 40-year-old driver’s attack of weakness. Identification of the victims was problematic because many tourists on board the crashed bus did not have documents with them. For unknown reasons, the bus fell from a bridge onto the railroad tracks and caught fire. This is another reason why it is difficult to establish an identity. The deceased were deposited in Mestre’s morgue, where family members were traveling.
A young Croatian woman who was on her honeymoon with her husband died on the bus. The couple from Split got married on September 10th. The deceased was six months pregnant. Her husband, injured in the hospital in the city of Mirano, has already managed to leave the hospital, Italian media reported.
18 people were injured, five of whom were still in mortal danger, including a small child. Three days of mourning were declared in the Venice region because of the accident. The Senate in Rome held a minute’s silence on Wednesday to honor the dead.
The accident sparked a debate in Italy about dilapidated infrastructure. The issue of guardrail safety on roads and highways is coming back into the spotlight. Experts must check the condition of the guardrail that the bus broke.
“Many of our roads are still inadequately protected. In many arteries, the protection devices are outdated”, warned Alfonso Montella, professor of roads, railways and airports at the Faculty of Civil Engineering at the Federico II University of Naples. On 28 July 2013, a bus fell from a bridge on the A16, near Monteforte Irpino, in the Campania region of southern Italy. 40 people died in the accident.